A New Sweden in Today's World

A New Sweden in Today’s World
H. A r n o ld Ba r t o n
Americans of Swedish descent naturally think of Sweden as
the “Old Country” their ancestors left, along with hundreds
of thousands of other Swedes, mainly for the United States,
and they carry with them an often highly predictable set of assump­tions
and images about their ancestors’ homeland. At the same time,
few seem really aware that Sweden in recent decades has become a
land of heavy immigration, rather than one of mass emigration.
My Swedish wife recalls her surprise, when she was first in the
United States during the 1950s, that a constant topic of conversa­tion
among Americans was what “nationality” they were, since in
Sweden “everyone was simply Swedish.” Sweden was in the past
regarded as ethnically a highly homogenous nation, both by foreign­ers
and by the Swedes themselves. In the closing years of the nine­teenth
century, the author Viktor Rydberg proudly proclaimed his
people to he of the purest “Aryan” blood.1 (That was well before
Adolf Hitler in Germany attached a particularly sinister meaning to
the word Aryan.) This view tended, of course, to disregard Sweden’s
small historic minorities, the Lapps, or Sami, and the old Finnish
population in the far north.
One could hardly make such a claim today. Judging by the
appearance of people in the streets, Stockholm has become a cosmo­politan
metropolis like New York or London, with inhabitants from
all parts of the world. In several other cities the situation is much the
same, and persons of obviously foreign origins can be found even in
many smaller towns.
In 2004, the official statistics showed that 13.3 percent of Sweden’s
H. ARNOLD BAR TON is a past editor of this journal and Professor Emeritus in
History at Southern Illinois University. He is a regular contributor to the Quarterly
and a highly regarded historian of both Swedish America aitd Scandirtaria.
124
population is foreign-bom. Out of a population of nine million in
2005, roughly one million were bom elsewhere. Between 800,000
and 900,000 were the children of immigrants. In addition, illegal
immigrants were estimated to number between 60,000 and 100,000,
and some 40,000 asylum-seekers were awaiting clearance.2
Together with their Swedish-bom children, these new Swedes
comprise a considerably larger element, as much as one-fifth of the
total population. With their younger average age and higher fertility
rates, their numbers are also growing more rapidly than the ethnic
Swedes. It is notable that the number of emigrants who left Sweden
to find greener pastures in America during the nineteenth and earlier
twentieth centuries—something more than one million—is closely
counterbalanced by the number of immigrants to Sweden since then!
Swedish statistics in 2004 showed that Finns were still the most
numerous immigrant group, as they have consistently been, number­ing
around 186,600. Other large groups, although each of them
numbering under 100,000, then included Serbs and Montenegrans,
Bosnians, Iraqis, Iranians, Poles, Norwegians, Danes, and Germans.
Among others, there were also some 15,300 Americans.3
lit actuality, immigration into Sweden is nothing new. Over the
centuries various groups have been absorbed into its population.
Germans were especially numerous during the Middle Ages, espe­cially
in the towns, where they played an important role in develop­ing
the economy. During the seventeenth century there was a large
influx of settlers from the interior of Finland, especially to the forest
region of Vannland, Dalama, and the northern provinces (Norrland).
At the same time, there were Walloon ironworkers from present-day
Belgium, Dutch merchants, Scottish and German soldiers of fortune.
Others of various nationalities would follow in smaller numbers down
through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and earlier twentieth centuries.
Many Swedes, including persons in the highest society, have foreign
surnames, and even many of these do not pride themselves on hav­ing
foreign strains in their ancestry.4
Already during the 1930s, the emigration-immigration balance
in Sweden began to change. From 1929 on, migration to Sweden has
been greater than migration from Sweden. During the 1930s, and
even earlier, the in-migration consisted mainly of returning emigrants
125
from America. Meanwhile, political and racial persecution in Eu­rope,
especially in Nazi Germany and in Austria after the German
take-over in 1938, resulted in modest numbers of refugees, mainly
Jewish, being somewhat grudgingly allowed into Sweden. Far greater
crowds of European refugees, including Jews from German concen­tration
camps and those Raoul Wallenberg rescued from 1 lungary,
together with persons fleeing the Baltic States, particularly Estonia,
before the advancing Red Army, arrived in Sweden at the end of
World War II. Many of these postwar refugees soon moved on to
other parts of the world to distance themselves even further from an
uncertain future in Europe.5
Sweden provided not only a refuge for persons but also assured
the preservation of their cultures and traditions in hopes of a better
day to come. I think, for instance, of Stockholm’s Estonian school—
still in existence—as well as its long-lived publishing house and book­store.
Sweden’s undamaged economy boomed during the postwar years
before the rest of Europe had time to repair the ravages of war. It
soon became evident that in view of its aging population—thanks
largely to its advanced social welfare measures—Sweden needed more
workers than the nation itself could provide to produce up to capac­ity
and assure the tax base necessary to support the expanding wel­fare
system. Europe at the time had plenty of surplus labor, which it
was not difficult for Swedish companies to recmit. By far the largest
contingent came from neighboring Finland, while others arrived from
the other Nordic lands and beyond. Certain industrial communities
received particular groups, for instance the Finns in Gothenburg’s
shipyards and Volvo automobile factory or the northern Italians at
the Asea works in Västerås. By the 1960s, there was growing labor
immigration from southern Europe—Greece and the former Yugosla­via—
and there were the beginnings of what would become a sizable
influx from Turkey. Meanwhile, many Swedish couples adopted Asian
orphans, particularly from Korea.
By the 1970s, the need for additional labor in Sweden had been
largely met, and it was beginning to become more difficult for for­eigners
to obtain working permits there. But not long thereafter a
new and more problematic type of immigration began: a new wave
126
of refugees from lands devastated by war or, more often, by civil
strife. By the 1980s, refugees from countries like Ethiopia, Somalia,
and Eritrea in Africa, Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia in South America,
or Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia, were admitted to Sweden, thanks
to the country’s relatively generous and certainly humane policy of
asylum. A familiar sight in Stockholm ever since has, incidentally,
been brightly attired Inca Indian street musicians from the Andes
playing their native instruments.
The new wave became a torrent by the 1990s, with refugees
from the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and growing numbers ot Kurds
and Assyrian Christians from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Already in 2004
there were some 70,000 Iraqis in Sweden. Since the beginning of the
Iraq War in 2003, Sweden has taken in a greater number of refugees
from that tragic land than any other country, something like 40
percent of all the Iraqi asylum-seekers in Europe.6 In contrast, some
countries, including Great Britain and Germany, have been sending
many of the refugees back to their home countries, alleging, some-times
on doubtful grounds, that they would no longer be in danger
there. After only a handful of Iraqis were admitted to the United
States since 2003, Congress at last, early in 2007, increased the
quota for Iraqi refugees to a mere 7,000!
How have the native Swedes reacted to the immigration since
World War II ended in 1945? That has depended upon who the
immigrants have been, when they arrived, in what numbers, and for
what purpose. The post-World War II Jewish and Baltic refugees
enjoyed widespread sympathy and were warmly received, like the
many Finnish “war children” who were given temporary homes in
Sweden during and sometimes after their homeland’s Winter War of
1939-40 against the Soviet Union or refugees from the German
occupation of Denmark and Norway. Those who stayed, and who
often came from educated backgrounds, integrated well into Swedish
society. The same was true of the numerous refugees from Hungary
following the uprising there against Communist rule in 1956.
The labor migrants of the 1950s and 1960s met with greater
reservations. The Finns encountered mixed reactions. I well remem­ber
a conversation between two Swedes I overheard back then on
the Stockholm subway. The one simply dismissed the Finns as for­
127
eigners and wondered what business they had being in Sweden. The
other insisted that “the Finns are like us.” They were, after all, Nor­dic
neighbors. Many of them, moreover, were Swedish-speakers from
the Finnish coasts and islands and were accepted as a matter of
course. The larger Finnish-speaking contingent, however, aroused
some hostility during the 1960s and 1970s due to its reputation for
unruly behavior and the fact that many made little effort to adapt
since they intended to return home as soon as times improved there.
Many did so eventually, while those who remained have assimilated
very successfully, to say nothing of the second generation. I have
noted, for instance, that one much more seldom hears Finnish spo­ken
in Stockholm than twenty or thirty years ago, except by visiting,
well-heeled businessmen or tourists. Finland’s economy is thriving,
and Finnish corporations recently have taken over many leading
Swedish companies.
By and large, reactions in Sweden to labor migrants from outside
of Scandinavia have been more reserved, especially toward those
from southern Europe and Turkey, who come from more alien envi­ronments
and cultures. This is particularly true since, like many of
the Finns before them, they are there simply to make money to take
back to their homelands to improve their lives there, and therefore
make little effort to adapt themselves culturally or to learn to leam
any more rudimentary Swedish than they have to.7 In such cases,
they remain, by choice, in their own little worlds. Notable excep­tions
are the Assyrian Christians, who have little desire to return to
Iraq as a religious minority in a Muslim land and have rooted them­selves
solidly in Sweden, especially in the Stockholm suburb of
Skärholmen. One of the better-known soccer teams in Sweden is the
Assyrian, wdtich now also includes native Swedish players.
The greatest problems involve the large wave of recent refugees.
Unlike those who came during or soon after World War II, by far the
greatest numbers have now come from Africa and the Near East.
They pose a difficult quandary for the Swedish government. A l­though
subject to some debate, Sweden has long prided itself on its
humanitarian tradition, including giving refuge to unfortunates from
war-torn countries. On principle, it still maintains the worlds most
humane policy of asylum. “We don’t turn anyone back,” the Swedish
128
asylum official Gunn Sundberg-Hjelm proudly told Time magazine in
a recent interview. “Look at the circumstances they have left!” 8
At the same time, Sweden’s refugee policy evidently operates on
the assumption that most will return to their countries of origin when
life there becomes more secure, as has been the case with many of
the Bosnians. Sweden has thus provided housing, social welfare ben­efits,
and schooling for the refugees’ children, while at the same time
denying most of them permanent residence or work permits. They
exist in a kind of limbo. Many arrive illegally, and if discovered are
sent home, giving rise to heartrending scenes that receive much
publicity in the media. Of those who are able to become legal resi­dents,
many educated and experienced professionals are compelled
to work in menial occupations, since they lack Swedish accreditation
in their fields. They thus represent both a “brain drain” for their
homelands and wasted competence in Sweden.
Most of the recent refugees are Muslims, which compounds the
problem. A greater culture clash cart scarcely be imagined than that
between traditional Islamic and present-day secularized Swedish life
and traditions. Devout Muslims sternly condemn what they regard as
atheism, hedonism, and rampant immorality in Sweden. Native Swedes
are meanwhile appalled by such practices among Muslim immigrants
as the repression of women, female genital mutilation (prevalent in
East Africa), and “honor killings” by their own male relatives of girls
who seek to escape Islamic constraints and consort with Swedish
men. Swedish law outlaws such practices, although still with only
limited success.
The Swedish government has for years now followed a vigorous
policy of promoting the assimilation ol legally resident aliens, or
“New Swedes.” The cabinet even includes a Minister of Integra­tion—
currently Nyamko Sabuni, the daughter of a Congolese refu­gee
who was herselt bom in Burundi.9 The policy is a liberal one,
allowing, for instance, the teaching of immigrant home languages,
while seeking to inculcate identification with and loyalty toward the
new homeland. The schools strongly promote this ideal. It has like­wise
set its stamp on the media world. Advertisements oiten include
persons who obviously are not ethnic Swedes and a number of well-known
media personalities are of foreign origins. The official policy
129
of integration was exemplified for me by the celebration of Sweden’s
Rag Day on 6 June on Skansen’s outdoor stage in Stockholm a few
years ago. Attended by the royal family, the mistress of ceremonies
was a young woman of African descent clad in Dalama folk dress,
who, of course, spoke perfect Stockholm Swedish.
One could easily compile a long list of individual immigrants
who have made a name for themselves in virtually every area of
Swedish life, including business, science and technology, sports, en­tertainment,
architecture, music, the fine arts, even literature. Sev­eral
immigrants sit in the Riksdag (parliament), and a number have
been cabinet ministers.
Still, on the popular level there is great perplexity and, for some,
grave concent over the immigration question. On the one hand,
many pride themselves on Sweden’s traditional hospitality toward
victims of oppression and welcome the more varied aitd cosmopoli­tan
influences that immigrants have contributed to Swedish life. An
example of the mixed opinions, however, arises when oite considers
the multitude of popular ethnic cafes and restaurants in Sweden’s
cities. On the one hand, the fare has become vastly more diverse; on
the other, it is not always so easy nowadays to find a place where they
serve good old “traditional Swedish” fare!
Others, however, have had more than enough, while some waver
between the two viewpoints. The high cost to Swedish taxpayers is
all too evident—and Swedish taxes are already among the highest in
the world. There are constant complaints that refugees are given
benefits and advantages that ought rightly to go to native Swedes,
and that they shrewdly manipulate the welfare system. Labor unions
are alarmed by a thriving immigrant “black” labor market that un­dercuts
standard wages while avoiding taxation. Immigrants are rou­tinely
blamed for increasing crime in a traditionally highly law-abid­ing
society. There are fears that both criminals and international
terrorists manage to slip into the country among the refugees and
that bitter conflicts between Shiites and Sunni in Iraq may spill over
into Sweden’s refugee population.
But beneath such practical considerations, there lies a deep in­stinctual
fear that with the apparently nearly constant, heavy influx
of outsiders Sweden will soon no longer be “Swedish” ! Privately,
130
southern European immigrants are often referred to condescendingly
as “blackheads” (svartskallar), although the term nowadays is applied
mainly to Near Easterners and Africans. At times there are bitter
confrontations between racist skinheads and immigrants and their
Swedish defenders. Small immigrant shops have repeatedly had their
walls spray painted with ugly graffiti or their windows smashed. At
the same time, extremist political splinter parties agitate for an end
or drastic limitations to immigration. Meanwhile, not only the gov-eminent
but many Swedish groups and individuals strive to combat
these prejudices.
All of this not withstanding, on the local, face-to-face level in a
representative Swedish community there is most often a cordial enough
relationship between “New” and “Old” Swedes. This is certainly bom
out by my long acquaintance with the Trollbäcken neighborhood in
Tyresö, a southern suburb of Stockholm. Many of my friends and
acquaintances there are immigrants or their children. Those belong­ing
to the older immigrant groups, like the Estonians, Hungarians,
Germans, or Finns, are to all intents and purposes integrated and
easily accepted by the Swedes and “their own.” There are also per­sons
of Polish, Italian, and Turkish origins who have done well for
themselves, are acculturated, respected, and well liked by their Swedish
neighbors. Two families from Morocco and a couple of women from
Thailand—long a favorite resort area for Swedes—are well accepted,
as are the operators of the local Italian, Chinese, and Japanese restau­rants.
All in all, in Trollbäcken at least, things work out well. How­ever,
this may contrast with conditions in certain concentrated subur­ban
immigrant enclaves like Stockholm’s Rinkeby or Malmo’s
Rosengård, where Swedish is seldom heard.
An American cannot but wonder about the similarities and dif­ferences
between immigration to the United States and to Sweden.10
Much of what is described here is familiar enough in America. Inter­estingly,
the proportion of foreign-born to the total American popu­lation
at its height, around 13 percent, is just about equal to the
proportion in Sweden today. In America, too, immigration was over­whelmingly
European until relatively recently, but today includes few
European as compared to the heavy inflow of people from other
parts of the world. The problems of adjustment, both for the immi-
131
grants and for the established population, have been very much the
same, including cultural fears over the changing character of the
society. As always, immigrants start out at the bottom of the ladder,
economically and socially, and work their way up as best they can.
On a topic related to all ol the above, there have been persistent
efforts from above in recent years to convert the Swedish Emigrant
Institute in Växjö into a “migration” institute concerned with the
recent immigrants in Sweden as well as with the old emigrants from
there, on the theory that their experiences have been closely analo­gous.
This has met with a good deal of opposition, for while Swedes
like to regard the emigration to America as a colorful and heroic
episode in their country’s past, their attitude toward immigrants in
their own country is far more problematical. Many Swedes tend to
identify more strongly with the novelist Vilhelm Mobergs stout-hearted
Karl Oskar and nostalgic Kristina than they do with the exotic types
they see in their own midst. The recent Swedish musical Kristina från
Duvemåla has been an immense success. But as things are now, could
one even conceive of a popular musical in Sweden about, say, Fatima
från Falluja?
There are to be sure clear similarities between the old emigrants
and the newer immigrants. Nevertheless, there are also significant
differences. On the one hand, the problem of illegal border crossings
is much greater in America. On the other, Sweden has maintained a
far more generous policy of political asylum. While America attracts
immigrants, both legal and illegal, because of its still plentiful oppor­tunities
for work and earnings, Sweden presently supports more asy-lum-
seekers than it can usefully employ. Also, Sweden provides its
ample social benefits to all, whereas such benefits are fewer in the
United States and access to them is more restricted.
But there is an even more fundamental difference. As in most
countries in the world, the Swedes generally conceive of their nation
not only as a political entity, but as an ethnic one as well. To be fully
accepted as a Swede, it is not enough to be an established resident,
or even a citizen of Sweden. Indeed, not even Swedish-born children
or sometimes even later descendants of foreigners, particularly non-
Europeans, are commonly regarded as truly “Swedish.” In Sweden, as
the sociologist Åke Daun puts it, “people like being like each other,”
132
and the “New Swedes” do not really fit that pattern.11 It would seem
that tribal instincts remain strong in the Old World, even among
coolheaded, enlightened, and normally tolerant Swedes
In many ways, America is the great exception in the world. The
nation is in principle and law based on a set of shared political ideals,
rather than on race or ethnicity. Aside from the native Indians, we all
trace our roots back to somewhere else. Although the old Anglo-
Americans, now in the minority, enjoy a certain historic eminence
and we speak the English language, we are (at least nominally) all
free to be who we are, to celebrate our ethnic, religious, and cultural
differences—and to appreciate those of others as American as our­selves.
In a recent article in the Swedish-American newspaper Nordstjerrum
in New York, the Swedish journalist Ull Nilson was impressed that
the Muslims in America—the majority of them native-born African
Americans—were a “great success” in terms of education, accom­plishment,
and social acceptance, and this despite recent Islamic
terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Islam is not, in
principle, any less “American” than Christianity or Judaism. The
same is far less true in Europe, where Islam does not fit the tradition­ally
ethnic concept of nationhood. Muslims, according to Nilson,
constitute around 3 percent of both the American and Swedish
populations, but the differences in their status and acceptance are
revealing concerning the differences between a political and an eth­nic
concept of nationhood.12
Eleavy immigration to Sweden during most of the past century
should not obscure the fact that Swedes have continued to emigrate
to other countries, albeit in relatively small numbers. Statistics in this
regard are even more uncertain and difficult to determine than they
are for immigration to Sweden. In an official survey from 2004 lor
the Swedish Statistical Central Bureau by Ake Nilsson, some 280,000
to 300,000 Swedes were then residing outside of Sweden. Of these,
around 50,000 lived in the United States. It is also estimated that
two out of every1 three Swedes abroad eventually remigrate to Swe­den.
13
America and Sweden are part of today’s “global village,” and
both societies are doing their best to accommodate themselves. In
133
neither country can we expect things to remain the way we might
like to remember and often miss. But lite goes on, and on both sides
of the ocean we must be ever ready to adapt to whatever it brings.
En d n o t e s
1. See Viktor Rydberg’s Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, 1886-1889.
The work was quickly translated into English by Rasmus B. Anderson under the
title Researches in Teutonic Mythology. See http://www.boudicca.de/teut.htm. For
a recent English edition see Researches in Teutonic Mythology (University Press of
the Pacific, 2003).
2. The statistics must be handled with care, since those available vary some­what.
See Ake Nilsson, Efterkrigstidens invandring och utvandring, Demografiska
Rapporter 2004:5 (Stockholm: Statistiska Centralbyrån, 2004), esp. 31; Christo­pher
Caldwell, “A Swedish Dilemma,” The Weekly Standard 10, issue 22 (28
February 2005); “Demographics of Sweden,” www.wikipedia.com.
3. Nilsson, Efterkrigstidens invandring och utvandring, 31; “Demographics of
Sweden.” See also Byron J. Nordstrom’s “Editor’s Comer,” Swedish'American His'
torical Quarterly 57 (2006): 1.39-50, esp. 147.
4- Estimates of Swedish return migration are based on the assumption that
immigration to Sweden from the late nineteenth century down to at least 1930
may be considered as practically synonymous with remigration.
5. The journalist Göran Rosenberg, who arrived as a child from Poland
after the war, tells in his Friare kan ingen vara (Stockholm, 1993) of how most of
his fellow Jewish refugees in Södertälje, where he grew up, soon departed for
America or Israel.
6. According to “Morning Report” on National Public Radio, 6 March
2007.
7. For the other side of the picture, see, for example, Caroline B. Brettell,
“In the Absence of Men,” Natural History 96 (1987): 51-61. This is about a
Portuguese village where most of the men are abroad earning money, leaving
their wives and children at home, and returning periodically to work on their
new, more comfortable homes there.
8. “The Departed,” Time (12 March 2007).
9. “Sabuni was a member of board of the Liberal Youth of Sweden from
1996 to 1998. She has cited the murder of the Ivorian refugee Gerard Gbeyo by
a Swedish skinhead in the town of Klippan in 1995 as one of the reasons she
became involved in politics. In a July 17, 2006, opinion letter published in the
Swedish newspaper Expressen, Sabuni called for mandatory gynecological ex­aminations
of all schoolgirls in order to prevent genital mutilation (also known
134
as female circumcision). She has proposed a ban on hijab for girls under 15 and
also advocated the inclusion of honor killings as an independent category within
the Swedish criminal code. In July 2006, her book Flickotrta vi sviker (The girls
we betray), about women in Sweden living under the threat of honor violence,
was published. On October 6, 2006, the new Swedish coalition government
which emerged from the election announced Sabuni’s appointment as the new
Minister for Integration and Gender Equality. She is the first person of African
descent to be appointed as Minister in a Swedish government.
“Sabuni’s appointment as Minister for Integration and Gender Equality was
met with protests from Sweden’s Muslims, who accused her of being islamophobic
and populist. A petition against her appointment was signed by—among oth­ers—
the Muslim Association of Sweden, the largest organization representing
Muslims in Sweden.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyamko_Sabuni.
10. Nordstrom, “Editor’s Comer.”
11. Quoted in Caldwell, “A Swedish Dilemma.”
12. Ulf Nilson, “A Lesson on Immigration,” Nordstjermn (New York), 7
December 2006.
13. Nilsson, Efterkrigstidens invandring och utvandring, 73, 80-83. See also my
article “The Latest Wave: Swedish Immigrants to the United States since World
War II,” in Hembygden och världen. Festskrift till UlfBeijbom, ed. Lars Olsson and
Sune Åkerman (Växjö, 2002), 105-15 (reprinted in my The Old Country and the
New: Essays cm Swedes and America, [Carbondale, 111., 2006], 218-30). Föreningen
svenskar i världen / The Society for Swedes Outside of Sweden claims on its
homepage that around 400,000 Swedes live abroad.

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A New Sweden in Today’s World
H. A r n o ld Ba r t o n
Americans of Swedish descent naturally think of Sweden as
the “Old Country” their ancestors left, along with hundreds
of thousands of other Swedes, mainly for the United States,
and they carry with them an often highly predictable set of assump­tions
and images about their ancestors’ homeland. At the same time,
few seem really aware that Sweden in recent decades has become a
land of heavy immigration, rather than one of mass emigration.
My Swedish wife recalls her surprise, when she was first in the
United States during the 1950s, that a constant topic of conversa­tion
among Americans was what “nationality” they were, since in
Sweden “everyone was simply Swedish.” Sweden was in the past
regarded as ethnically a highly homogenous nation, both by foreign­ers
and by the Swedes themselves. In the closing years of the nine­teenth
century, the author Viktor Rydberg proudly proclaimed his
people to he of the purest “Aryan” blood.1 (That was well before
Adolf Hitler in Germany attached a particularly sinister meaning to
the word Aryan.) This view tended, of course, to disregard Sweden’s
small historic minorities, the Lapps, or Sami, and the old Finnish
population in the far north.
One could hardly make such a claim today. Judging by the
appearance of people in the streets, Stockholm has become a cosmo­politan
metropolis like New York or London, with inhabitants from
all parts of the world. In several other cities the situation is much the
same, and persons of obviously foreign origins can be found even in
many smaller towns.
In 2004, the official statistics showed that 13.3 percent of Sweden’s
H. ARNOLD BAR TON is a past editor of this journal and Professor Emeritus in
History at Southern Illinois University. He is a regular contributor to the Quarterly
and a highly regarded historian of both Swedish America aitd Scandirtaria.
124
population is foreign-bom. Out of a population of nine million in
2005, roughly one million were bom elsewhere. Between 800,000
and 900,000 were the children of immigrants. In addition, illegal
immigrants were estimated to number between 60,000 and 100,000,
and some 40,000 asylum-seekers were awaiting clearance.2
Together with their Swedish-bom children, these new Swedes
comprise a considerably larger element, as much as one-fifth of the
total population. With their younger average age and higher fertility
rates, their numbers are also growing more rapidly than the ethnic
Swedes. It is notable that the number of emigrants who left Sweden
to find greener pastures in America during the nineteenth and earlier
twentieth centuries—something more than one million—is closely
counterbalanced by the number of immigrants to Sweden since then!
Swedish statistics in 2004 showed that Finns were still the most
numerous immigrant group, as they have consistently been, number­ing
around 186,600. Other large groups, although each of them
numbering under 100,000, then included Serbs and Montenegrans,
Bosnians, Iraqis, Iranians, Poles, Norwegians, Danes, and Germans.
Among others, there were also some 15,300 Americans.3
lit actuality, immigration into Sweden is nothing new. Over the
centuries various groups have been absorbed into its population.
Germans were especially numerous during the Middle Ages, espe­cially
in the towns, where they played an important role in develop­ing
the economy. During the seventeenth century there was a large
influx of settlers from the interior of Finland, especially to the forest
region of Vannland, Dalama, and the northern provinces (Norrland).
At the same time, there were Walloon ironworkers from present-day
Belgium, Dutch merchants, Scottish and German soldiers of fortune.
Others of various nationalities would follow in smaller numbers down
through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and earlier twentieth centuries.
Many Swedes, including persons in the highest society, have foreign
surnames, and even many of these do not pride themselves on hav­ing
foreign strains in their ancestry.4
Already during the 1930s, the emigration-immigration balance
in Sweden began to change. From 1929 on, migration to Sweden has
been greater than migration from Sweden. During the 1930s, and
even earlier, the in-migration consisted mainly of returning emigrants
125
from America. Meanwhile, political and racial persecution in Eu­rope,
especially in Nazi Germany and in Austria after the German
take-over in 1938, resulted in modest numbers of refugees, mainly
Jewish, being somewhat grudgingly allowed into Sweden. Far greater
crowds of European refugees, including Jews from German concen­tration
camps and those Raoul Wallenberg rescued from 1 lungary,
together with persons fleeing the Baltic States, particularly Estonia,
before the advancing Red Army, arrived in Sweden at the end of
World War II. Many of these postwar refugees soon moved on to
other parts of the world to distance themselves even further from an
uncertain future in Europe.5
Sweden provided not only a refuge for persons but also assured
the preservation of their cultures and traditions in hopes of a better
day to come. I think, for instance, of Stockholm’s Estonian school—
still in existence—as well as its long-lived publishing house and book­store.
Sweden’s undamaged economy boomed during the postwar years
before the rest of Europe had time to repair the ravages of war. It
soon became evident that in view of its aging population—thanks
largely to its advanced social welfare measures—Sweden needed more
workers than the nation itself could provide to produce up to capac­ity
and assure the tax base necessary to support the expanding wel­fare
system. Europe at the time had plenty of surplus labor, which it
was not difficult for Swedish companies to recmit. By far the largest
contingent came from neighboring Finland, while others arrived from
the other Nordic lands and beyond. Certain industrial communities
received particular groups, for instance the Finns in Gothenburg’s
shipyards and Volvo automobile factory or the northern Italians at
the Asea works in Västerås. By the 1960s, there was growing labor
immigration from southern Europe—Greece and the former Yugosla­via—
and there were the beginnings of what would become a sizable
influx from Turkey. Meanwhile, many Swedish couples adopted Asian
orphans, particularly from Korea.
By the 1970s, the need for additional labor in Sweden had been
largely met, and it was beginning to become more difficult for for­eigners
to obtain working permits there. But not long thereafter a
new and more problematic type of immigration began: a new wave
126
of refugees from lands devastated by war or, more often, by civil
strife. By the 1980s, refugees from countries like Ethiopia, Somalia,
and Eritrea in Africa, Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia in South America,
or Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia, were admitted to Sweden, thanks
to the country’s relatively generous and certainly humane policy of
asylum. A familiar sight in Stockholm ever since has, incidentally,
been brightly attired Inca Indian street musicians from the Andes
playing their native instruments.
The new wave became a torrent by the 1990s, with refugees
from the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and growing numbers ot Kurds
and Assyrian Christians from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Already in 2004
there were some 70,000 Iraqis in Sweden. Since the beginning of the
Iraq War in 2003, Sweden has taken in a greater number of refugees
from that tragic land than any other country, something like 40
percent of all the Iraqi asylum-seekers in Europe.6 In contrast, some
countries, including Great Britain and Germany, have been sending
many of the refugees back to their home countries, alleging, some-times
on doubtful grounds, that they would no longer be in danger
there. After only a handful of Iraqis were admitted to the United
States since 2003, Congress at last, early in 2007, increased the
quota for Iraqi refugees to a mere 7,000!
How have the native Swedes reacted to the immigration since
World War II ended in 1945? That has depended upon who the
immigrants have been, when they arrived, in what numbers, and for
what purpose. The post-World War II Jewish and Baltic refugees
enjoyed widespread sympathy and were warmly received, like the
many Finnish “war children” who were given temporary homes in
Sweden during and sometimes after their homeland’s Winter War of
1939-40 against the Soviet Union or refugees from the German
occupation of Denmark and Norway. Those who stayed, and who
often came from educated backgrounds, integrated well into Swedish
society. The same was true of the numerous refugees from Hungary
following the uprising there against Communist rule in 1956.
The labor migrants of the 1950s and 1960s met with greater
reservations. The Finns encountered mixed reactions. I well remem­ber
a conversation between two Swedes I overheard back then on
the Stockholm subway. The one simply dismissed the Finns as for­
127
eigners and wondered what business they had being in Sweden. The
other insisted that “the Finns are like us.” They were, after all, Nor­dic
neighbors. Many of them, moreover, were Swedish-speakers from
the Finnish coasts and islands and were accepted as a matter of
course. The larger Finnish-speaking contingent, however, aroused
some hostility during the 1960s and 1970s due to its reputation for
unruly behavior and the fact that many made little effort to adapt
since they intended to return home as soon as times improved there.
Many did so eventually, while those who remained have assimilated
very successfully, to say nothing of the second generation. I have
noted, for instance, that one much more seldom hears Finnish spo­ken
in Stockholm than twenty or thirty years ago, except by visiting,
well-heeled businessmen or tourists. Finland’s economy is thriving,
and Finnish corporations recently have taken over many leading
Swedish companies.
By and large, reactions in Sweden to labor migrants from outside
of Scandinavia have been more reserved, especially toward those
from southern Europe and Turkey, who come from more alien envi­ronments
and cultures. This is particularly true since, like many of
the Finns before them, they are there simply to make money to take
back to their homelands to improve their lives there, and therefore
make little effort to adapt themselves culturally or to learn to leam
any more rudimentary Swedish than they have to.7 In such cases,
they remain, by choice, in their own little worlds. Notable excep­tions
are the Assyrian Christians, who have little desire to return to
Iraq as a religious minority in a Muslim land and have rooted them­selves
solidly in Sweden, especially in the Stockholm suburb of
Skärholmen. One of the better-known soccer teams in Sweden is the
Assyrian, wdtich now also includes native Swedish players.
The greatest problems involve the large wave of recent refugees.
Unlike those who came during or soon after World War II, by far the
greatest numbers have now come from Africa and the Near East.
They pose a difficult quandary for the Swedish government. A l­though
subject to some debate, Sweden has long prided itself on its
humanitarian tradition, including giving refuge to unfortunates from
war-torn countries. On principle, it still maintains the worlds most
humane policy of asylum. “We don’t turn anyone back,” the Swedish
128
asylum official Gunn Sundberg-Hjelm proudly told Time magazine in
a recent interview. “Look at the circumstances they have left!” 8
At the same time, Sweden’s refugee policy evidently operates on
the assumption that most will return to their countries of origin when
life there becomes more secure, as has been the case with many of
the Bosnians. Sweden has thus provided housing, social welfare ben­efits,
and schooling for the refugees’ children, while at the same time
denying most of them permanent residence or work permits. They
exist in a kind of limbo. Many arrive illegally, and if discovered are
sent home, giving rise to heartrending scenes that receive much
publicity in the media. Of those who are able to become legal resi­dents,
many educated and experienced professionals are compelled
to work in menial occupations, since they lack Swedish accreditation
in their fields. They thus represent both a “brain drain” for their
homelands and wasted competence in Sweden.
Most of the recent refugees are Muslims, which compounds the
problem. A greater culture clash cart scarcely be imagined than that
between traditional Islamic and present-day secularized Swedish life
and traditions. Devout Muslims sternly condemn what they regard as
atheism, hedonism, and rampant immorality in Sweden. Native Swedes
are meanwhile appalled by such practices among Muslim immigrants
as the repression of women, female genital mutilation (prevalent in
East Africa), and “honor killings” by their own male relatives of girls
who seek to escape Islamic constraints and consort with Swedish
men. Swedish law outlaws such practices, although still with only
limited success.
The Swedish government has for years now followed a vigorous
policy of promoting the assimilation ol legally resident aliens, or
“New Swedes.” The cabinet even includes a Minister of Integra­tion—
currently Nyamko Sabuni, the daughter of a Congolese refu­gee
who was herselt bom in Burundi.9 The policy is a liberal one,
allowing, for instance, the teaching of immigrant home languages,
while seeking to inculcate identification with and loyalty toward the
new homeland. The schools strongly promote this ideal. It has like­wise
set its stamp on the media world. Advertisements oiten include
persons who obviously are not ethnic Swedes and a number of well-known
media personalities are of foreign origins. The official policy
129
of integration was exemplified for me by the celebration of Sweden’s
Rag Day on 6 June on Skansen’s outdoor stage in Stockholm a few
years ago. Attended by the royal family, the mistress of ceremonies
was a young woman of African descent clad in Dalama folk dress,
who, of course, spoke perfect Stockholm Swedish.
One could easily compile a long list of individual immigrants
who have made a name for themselves in virtually every area of
Swedish life, including business, science and technology, sports, en­tertainment,
architecture, music, the fine arts, even literature. Sev­eral
immigrants sit in the Riksdag (parliament), and a number have
been cabinet ministers.
Still, on the popular level there is great perplexity and, for some,
grave concent over the immigration question. On the one hand,
many pride themselves on Sweden’s traditional hospitality toward
victims of oppression and welcome the more varied aitd cosmopoli­tan
influences that immigrants have contributed to Swedish life. An
example of the mixed opinions, however, arises when oite considers
the multitude of popular ethnic cafes and restaurants in Sweden’s
cities. On the one hand, the fare has become vastly more diverse; on
the other, it is not always so easy nowadays to find a place where they
serve good old “traditional Swedish” fare!
Others, however, have had more than enough, while some waver
between the two viewpoints. The high cost to Swedish taxpayers is
all too evident—and Swedish taxes are already among the highest in
the world. There are constant complaints that refugees are given
benefits and advantages that ought rightly to go to native Swedes,
and that they shrewdly manipulate the welfare system. Labor unions
are alarmed by a thriving immigrant “black” labor market that un­dercuts
standard wages while avoiding taxation. Immigrants are rou­tinely
blamed for increasing crime in a traditionally highly law-abid­ing
society. There are fears that both criminals and international
terrorists manage to slip into the country among the refugees and
that bitter conflicts between Shiites and Sunni in Iraq may spill over
into Sweden’s refugee population.
But beneath such practical considerations, there lies a deep in­stinctual
fear that with the apparently nearly constant, heavy influx
of outsiders Sweden will soon no longer be “Swedish” ! Privately,
130
southern European immigrants are often referred to condescendingly
as “blackheads” (svartskallar), although the term nowadays is applied
mainly to Near Easterners and Africans. At times there are bitter
confrontations between racist skinheads and immigrants and their
Swedish defenders. Small immigrant shops have repeatedly had their
walls spray painted with ugly graffiti or their windows smashed. At
the same time, extremist political splinter parties agitate for an end
or drastic limitations to immigration. Meanwhile, not only the gov-eminent
but many Swedish groups and individuals strive to combat
these prejudices.
All of this not withstanding, on the local, face-to-face level in a
representative Swedish community there is most often a cordial enough
relationship between “New” and “Old” Swedes. This is certainly bom
out by my long acquaintance with the Trollbäcken neighborhood in
Tyresö, a southern suburb of Stockholm. Many of my friends and
acquaintances there are immigrants or their children. Those belong­ing
to the older immigrant groups, like the Estonians, Hungarians,
Germans, or Finns, are to all intents and purposes integrated and
easily accepted by the Swedes and “their own.” There are also per­sons
of Polish, Italian, and Turkish origins who have done well for
themselves, are acculturated, respected, and well liked by their Swedish
neighbors. Two families from Morocco and a couple of women from
Thailand—long a favorite resort area for Swedes—are well accepted,
as are the operators of the local Italian, Chinese, and Japanese restau­rants.
All in all, in Trollbäcken at least, things work out well. How­ever,
this may contrast with conditions in certain concentrated subur­ban
immigrant enclaves like Stockholm’s Rinkeby or Malmo’s
Rosengård, where Swedish is seldom heard.
An American cannot but wonder about the similarities and dif­ferences
between immigration to the United States and to Sweden.10
Much of what is described here is familiar enough in America. Inter­estingly,
the proportion of foreign-born to the total American popu­lation
at its height, around 13 percent, is just about equal to the
proportion in Sweden today. In America, too, immigration was over­whelmingly
European until relatively recently, but today includes few
European as compared to the heavy inflow of people from other
parts of the world. The problems of adjustment, both for the immi-
131
grants and for the established population, have been very much the
same, including cultural fears over the changing character of the
society. As always, immigrants start out at the bottom of the ladder,
economically and socially, and work their way up as best they can.
On a topic related to all ol the above, there have been persistent
efforts from above in recent years to convert the Swedish Emigrant
Institute in Växjö into a “migration” institute concerned with the
recent immigrants in Sweden as well as with the old emigrants from
there, on the theory that their experiences have been closely analo­gous.
This has met with a good deal of opposition, for while Swedes
like to regard the emigration to America as a colorful and heroic
episode in their country’s past, their attitude toward immigrants in
their own country is far more problematical. Many Swedes tend to
identify more strongly with the novelist Vilhelm Mobergs stout-hearted
Karl Oskar and nostalgic Kristina than they do with the exotic types
they see in their own midst. The recent Swedish musical Kristina från
Duvemåla has been an immense success. But as things are now, could
one even conceive of a popular musical in Sweden about, say, Fatima
från Falluja?
There are to be sure clear similarities between the old emigrants
and the newer immigrants. Nevertheless, there are also significant
differences. On the one hand, the problem of illegal border crossings
is much greater in America. On the other, Sweden has maintained a
far more generous policy of political asylum. While America attracts
immigrants, both legal and illegal, because of its still plentiful oppor­tunities
for work and earnings, Sweden presently supports more asy-lum-
seekers than it can usefully employ. Also, Sweden provides its
ample social benefits to all, whereas such benefits are fewer in the
United States and access to them is more restricted.
But there is an even more fundamental difference. As in most
countries in the world, the Swedes generally conceive of their nation
not only as a political entity, but as an ethnic one as well. To be fully
accepted as a Swede, it is not enough to be an established resident,
or even a citizen of Sweden. Indeed, not even Swedish-born children
or sometimes even later descendants of foreigners, particularly non-
Europeans, are commonly regarded as truly “Swedish.” In Sweden, as
the sociologist Åke Daun puts it, “people like being like each other,”
132
and the “New Swedes” do not really fit that pattern.11 It would seem
that tribal instincts remain strong in the Old World, even among
coolheaded, enlightened, and normally tolerant Swedes
In many ways, America is the great exception in the world. The
nation is in principle and law based on a set of shared political ideals,
rather than on race or ethnicity. Aside from the native Indians, we all
trace our roots back to somewhere else. Although the old Anglo-
Americans, now in the minority, enjoy a certain historic eminence
and we speak the English language, we are (at least nominally) all
free to be who we are, to celebrate our ethnic, religious, and cultural
differences—and to appreciate those of others as American as our­selves.
In a recent article in the Swedish-American newspaper Nordstjerrum
in New York, the Swedish journalist Ull Nilson was impressed that
the Muslims in America—the majority of them native-born African
Americans—were a “great success” in terms of education, accom­plishment,
and social acceptance, and this despite recent Islamic
terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Islam is not, in
principle, any less “American” than Christianity or Judaism. The
same is far less true in Europe, where Islam does not fit the tradition­ally
ethnic concept of nationhood. Muslims, according to Nilson,
constitute around 3 percent of both the American and Swedish
populations, but the differences in their status and acceptance are
revealing concerning the differences between a political and an eth­nic
concept of nationhood.12
Eleavy immigration to Sweden during most of the past century
should not obscure the fact that Swedes have continued to emigrate
to other countries, albeit in relatively small numbers. Statistics in this
regard are even more uncertain and difficult to determine than they
are for immigration to Sweden. In an official survey from 2004 lor
the Swedish Statistical Central Bureau by Ake Nilsson, some 280,000
to 300,000 Swedes were then residing outside of Sweden. Of these,
around 50,000 lived in the United States. It is also estimated that
two out of every1 three Swedes abroad eventually remigrate to Swe­den.
13
America and Sweden are part of today’s “global village,” and
both societies are doing their best to accommodate themselves. In
133
neither country can we expect things to remain the way we might
like to remember and often miss. But lite goes on, and on both sides
of the ocean we must be ever ready to adapt to whatever it brings.
En d n o t e s
1. See Viktor Rydberg’s Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, 1886-1889.
The work was quickly translated into English by Rasmus B. Anderson under the
title Researches in Teutonic Mythology. See http://www.boudicca.de/teut.htm. For
a recent English edition see Researches in Teutonic Mythology (University Press of
the Pacific, 2003).
2. The statistics must be handled with care, since those available vary some­what.
See Ake Nilsson, Efterkrigstidens invandring och utvandring, Demografiska
Rapporter 2004:5 (Stockholm: Statistiska Centralbyrån, 2004), esp. 31; Christo­pher
Caldwell, “A Swedish Dilemma,” The Weekly Standard 10, issue 22 (28
February 2005); “Demographics of Sweden,” www.wikipedia.com.
3. Nilsson, Efterkrigstidens invandring och utvandring, 31; “Demographics of
Sweden.” See also Byron J. Nordstrom’s “Editor’s Comer,” Swedish'American His'
torical Quarterly 57 (2006): 1.39-50, esp. 147.
4- Estimates of Swedish return migration are based on the assumption that
immigration to Sweden from the late nineteenth century down to at least 1930
may be considered as practically synonymous with remigration.
5. The journalist Göran Rosenberg, who arrived as a child from Poland
after the war, tells in his Friare kan ingen vara (Stockholm, 1993) of how most of
his fellow Jewish refugees in Södertälje, where he grew up, soon departed for
America or Israel.
6. According to “Morning Report” on National Public Radio, 6 March
2007.
7. For the other side of the picture, see, for example, Caroline B. Brettell,
“In the Absence of Men,” Natural History 96 (1987): 51-61. This is about a
Portuguese village where most of the men are abroad earning money, leaving
their wives and children at home, and returning periodically to work on their
new, more comfortable homes there.
8. “The Departed,” Time (12 March 2007).
9. “Sabuni was a member of board of the Liberal Youth of Sweden from
1996 to 1998. She has cited the murder of the Ivorian refugee Gerard Gbeyo by
a Swedish skinhead in the town of Klippan in 1995 as one of the reasons she
became involved in politics. In a July 17, 2006, opinion letter published in the
Swedish newspaper Expressen, Sabuni called for mandatory gynecological ex­aminations
of all schoolgirls in order to prevent genital mutilation (also known
134
as female circumcision). She has proposed a ban on hijab for girls under 15 and
also advocated the inclusion of honor killings as an independent category within
the Swedish criminal code. In July 2006, her book Flickotrta vi sviker (The girls
we betray), about women in Sweden living under the threat of honor violence,
was published. On October 6, 2006, the new Swedish coalition government
which emerged from the election announced Sabuni’s appointment as the new
Minister for Integration and Gender Equality. She is the first person of African
descent to be appointed as Minister in a Swedish government.
“Sabuni’s appointment as Minister for Integration and Gender Equality was
met with protests from Sweden’s Muslims, who accused her of being islamophobic
and populist. A petition against her appointment was signed by—among oth­ers—
the Muslim Association of Sweden, the largest organization representing
Muslims in Sweden.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyamko_Sabuni.
10. Nordstrom, “Editor’s Comer.”
11. Quoted in Caldwell, “A Swedish Dilemma.”
12. Ulf Nilson, “A Lesson on Immigration,” Nordstjermn (New York), 7
December 2006.
13. Nilsson, Efterkrigstidens invandring och utvandring, 73, 80-83. See also my
article “The Latest Wave: Swedish Immigrants to the United States since World
War II,” in Hembygden och världen. Festskrift till UlfBeijbom, ed. Lars Olsson and
Sune Åkerman (Växjö, 2002), 105-15 (reprinted in my The Old Country and the
New: Essays cm Swedes and America, [Carbondale, 111., 2006], 218-30). Föreningen
svenskar i världen / The Society for Swedes Outside of Sweden claims on its
homepage that around 400,000 Swedes live abroad.